The yen/dollar exchange rate steadily rose and weakened ahead of this year’s first financial policy-making meeting by the Bank of Japan, the central bank of Japan, to nearly 150 yen per dollar for the first time in two months.
According to the Nikkei on the 19th, the yen/dollar exchange rate once rose by about 1 yen from the previous day to 148.79 yen in the foreign exchange market.
The yen/dollar exchange rate rose to 151.89 yen in mid-November last year, but fell to the early 140 yen range and then turned upward.
Nikkei analyzed that the market continues to sell yen and buy dollars due to the difference in interest rates between the U.S. and Japan.
Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said at a press conference that he was “watching carefully” regarding the weak yen and that it was important for the exchange rate to change stably to reflect the basic economic conditions.
According to the Asahi Shimbun, the Bank of Japan is expected to maintain a large-scale financial easing that keeps interest rates at a very low level while carefully monitoring the indicators related to the “virtuous cycle of inflation and wage increases,” which were previously proposed at the financial policy-making meeting on the 22nd and 23rd.
Meanwhile, the Nikkei 225 average, the representative stock index of the Japanese stock market, rose 1.4% from the previous trading day to 35,963, the highest since February 1990.
The Nikkei Index rose for six consecutive trading days until the 15th, raising expectations that it could exceed the all-time high of 38,915 recorded at the end of 1989 during the “bubble economy.”
